editorNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94Jon Hamilton is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. Currently he focuses on neuroscience, health risks, and extreme weather. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Hamilton was part of NPR's team of science reporters and editors who went to Japan to cover the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Hamilton contributed several pieces to the Science Desk series "The Human Edge," which looked at what makes people the most versatile and powerful species on Earth. His reporting explained how humans use stories, how the highly evolved human brain is made from primitive parts, and what autism reveals about humans social brains. In 2009, Hamilton received the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for his piece on the neuroscience behind treating autism. Before joining NPR in 1998, Hamilton was a media fellow with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation studying health policy issues. He reported on states that have improved their Medicaid programs for the poor byNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94Jon HamiltonSat, 24 Feb 2018 08:22:16 +0000Jon Hamiltonhttp://tspr.org
Jon HamiltonThe chemical BPA isn't living up to its nasty reputation. A two-year government study of rats found that even high doses of the plastic additive produced only "minimal effects," and that these effects could have occurred by chance. The finding bolsters the Food and Drug Administration's 2014 assessment that water bottles and other products containing BPA are not making people sick. "[It] supports our determination that currently authorized uses of BPA continue to be safe for consumers," said Dr. Stephen Ostroff, the FDA's deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, in a statement issued by the agency. The study's findings are at odds with claims by advocacy groups that exposure to BPA is associated with a wide range of health effects including cancer, obesity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The study results appear in a 249-page draft report released Friday by the National Toxicology Program . The research was a joint effort involving the National Institutes ofPlastic Additive BPA Not Much Of A Threat, Government Study Finds http://tspr.org/post/plastic-additive-bpa-not-much-threat-government-study-finds
116859 as http://tspr.orgFri, 23 Feb 2018 21:06:00 +0000Plastic Additive BPA Not Much Of A Threat, Government Study Finds Jon HamiltonBeer has fueled a lot of bad ideas. But on a Friday afternoon in 2007, it helped two Alzheimer's researchers come up with a really a good one. Neuroscientists Robert Moir and Rudolph Tanzi were sipping Coronas in separate offices during "attitude adjustment hour" at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard's largest teaching hospital. And, by chance, each scientist found himself wondering about an apparent link between Alzheimer's disease and the immune system. Moir had been surfing through random scientific papers online — something he does for an hour or so on most Fridays. "I cruise wherever my fancy takes me," he says. And on this day, he cruised to research on molecules known as antimicrobial peptides. They're part of the ancient immune system that's found in all forms of life and plays an important role in protecting the human brain. One way antimicrobial peptides protect us is by engulfing and neutralizing a germ or some other foreign invader. That gives newer parts of the immuneScientists Explore Ties Between Alzheimer's And Brain's Ancient Immune Systemhttp://tspr.org/post/scientists-explore-ties-between-alzheimers-and-brains-ancient-immune-system
116575 as http://tspr.orgSun, 18 Feb 2018 10:00:00 +0000Scientists Explore Ties Between Alzheimer's And Brain's Ancient Immune SystemJon HamiltonA little electrical brain stimulation can go a long way in boosting memory. The key is to deliver a tiny pulse of electricity to exactly the right place at exactly the right moment, a team reports in Tuesday's Nature Communications . "We saw a 15 percent improvement in memory," says Michael Kahana , a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of the study. The approach hints at a new way of treating people with memory problems caused by a brain injury or Alzheimer's disease, Kahana says. But the technology is still far from widespread use. Kahana has spent years trying to understand why the brain often fails to store information we want it to keep. "When we're trying to study a list of items, sometimes the items stick and sometimes we have momentary lapses where we don't seem to remember anything," he says. Kahana and a team of researchers thought there must be a way to help the brain do better. So they had a computer learn to recognize patterns ofA Tiny Pulse Of Electricity Can Help The Brain Form Lasting Memorieshttp://tspr.org/post/tiny-pulse-electricity-can-help-brain-form-lasting-memories
115996 as http://tspr.orgTue, 06 Feb 2018 18:35:00 +0000A Tiny Pulse Of Electricity Can Help The Brain Form Lasting MemoriesJon Hamiltonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZYqe8H0TDc When Sarah Jay had her first seizure, she was in her mid-20s and working a high-stress job at a call center in Springfield, Mo. "I was going to go on break," she says. "I was heading towards the bathroom and then I fell and passed out." An ambulance took Jay to the hospital but doctors there couldn't find anything wrong. Jay figured it was a one-time thing. Then a week later, she had another seizure. And that kept happening once or twice a week. "So I was put on short-term disability for my work to try to figure out what was going on," says Jay, who's now 29. The most likely cause for her seizures was abnormal electrical activity in her brain. In other words, epilepsy. But Jay's doctors wanted to be sure. In May 2013, they admitted her to a hospital epilepsy center, put electrodes on her scalp and began watching her brain activity. An epileptic seizure looks a bit like an electrical storm in the brain. Neurons begin to fire uncontrollably,Her Seizures Looked Like Epilepsy, But Her Brain Looked Finehttp://tspr.org/post/her-seizures-looked-epilepsy-her-brain-looked-fine
115772 as http://tspr.orgThu, 01 Feb 2018 21:37:00 +0000Her Seizures Looked Like Epilepsy, But Her Brain Looked FineJon HamiltonScientists have found specialized brain cells in mice that appear to control anxiety levels. The finding, reported Wednesday in the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to better treatments for anxiety disorders , which affect nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. "The therapies we have now have significant drawbacks," says Mazen Kheirbek , an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an author of the study. "This is another target that we can try to move the field forward for finding new therapies." But the research is at an early stage and lab findings in animals don't always pan out in humans. The discovery of anxiety cells is just the latest example of the "tremendous progress" scientists have made toward understanding how anxiety works in the brain, says Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research. "If we can learn enough, we can develop the tools to turn on and off the key players that regulateResearchers Discover 'Anxiety Cells' In The Brainhttp://tspr.org/post/researchers-discover-anxiety-cells-brain
115707 as http://tspr.orgWed, 31 Jan 2018 17:00:00 +0000Researchers Discover 'Anxiety Cells' In The BrainJon HamiltonOlder brains may forget more because they lose their rhythm at night. During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team reports in the journal Neuron. "It's like a drummer that's perhaps just one beat off the rhythm," says Matt Walker , one of the paper's authors and a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. "The aging brain just doesn't seem to be able to synchronize its brain waves effectively." The finding appears to answer a long-standing question about how aging can affect memory even in people who do not have Alzheimer's or some other brain disease. "This is the first paper that actually found a cellular mechanism that might be affected during aging and therefore be responsible for a lack of memory consolidation during sleep," says Julie Seibt , a lecturer in sleep and plasticity at the University of Surrey in the U.K. Seibt was not involved in the new study.Older Adults' Forgetfulness Tied To Faulty Brain Rhythms In Sleephttp://tspr.org/post/older-adults-forgetfulness-tied-faulty-brain-rhythms-sleep
113740 as http://tspr.orgMon, 18 Dec 2017 10:00:00 +0000Older Adults' Forgetfulness Tied To Faulty Brain Rhythms In SleepJon HamiltonCopyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: All this week we are talking to our friends here at NPR about their favorite things from 2017. And we're nerding out here. These are not, like, simple best-of lists. Today, science correspondent Jon Hamilton is here to share his highly specific superlative. Hello there. JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Hey. MCEVERS: OK. What do you have? HAMILTON: I have got what I consider, like, the weirdest and coolest advance in brain science. And what it is is researchers have gotten really good at growing tiny human brains in the lab. MCEVERS: OK, like, in a petri dish? HAMILTON: Well, kind of. They actually grow them in something called a bioreactor. And then as they grow, they actually begin to assemble themselves very much the way cells do in the human brain during development in the fetus. MCEVERS: Do they look like tiny brains? HAMILTON: Well, a little bit. They are about the size of a pinhead, so they're considerably smaller than a humanHow Scientists Are Growing Mini Brains In Petri Dishes For Experimentshttp://tspr.org/post/how-scientists-are-growing-mini-brains-petri-dishes-experiments
113512 as http://tspr.orgTue, 12 Dec 2017 21:34:00 +0000How Scientists Are Growing Mini Brains In Petri Dishes For ExperimentsJon HamiltonWhy Your Brain Has Trouble Bailing Out Of A Bad Planhttp://tspr.org/post/why-your-brain-has-trouble-bailing-out-bad-plan
113292 as http://tspr.orgThu, 07 Dec 2017 21:40:00 +0000Why Your Brain Has Trouble Bailing Out Of A Bad PlanJon HamiltonPeople who experience frequent migraines may soon have access to a new class of drugs. In a pair of large studies, two drugs that tweak brain circuits involved in migraine each showed they could reduce the frequency of attacks without causing side effects, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine . "They offer the first migraine treatment that's actually aimed at the disorder," says Peter Goadsby , an author of one of the studies and a professor of neurology at King's College in London. Current migraine prevention treatments consist primarily of drugs designed to treat high blood pressure, epilepsy and depression. "We give [patients] a choice between a beta blocker where they'll feel tired, or we tell them they can go on an antidepressant, which will make them sleepy and put on weight," Goadsby says. The new drugs use special antibodies to dampen a system in the brain that modulates pain. The effect is a bit like soundproofing, says Stephen Silberstein , a study authorNew Drugs Could Prevent Migraine Headaches For Some Peoplehttp://tspr.org/post/new-drugs-could-prevent-migraine-headaches-some-people
113092 as http://tspr.orgMon, 04 Dec 2017 08:50:00 +0000New Drugs Could Prevent Migraine Headaches For Some PeopleJon HamiltonCopyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: The light coming from screens, like the one on your smartphone, is known as blue light, and it can interfere with sleep. So some people use apps to filter out some of that blue light. NPR's Jon Hamilton had some questions, so he rang up some scientists. JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: The first person I called is Lisa Ostrin at the University of Houston College of Optometry. She studies the effects of blue light on sleep. She also owns an iPhone. And every iPhone comes with an app called Night Shift that lets you filter out blue light. So I asked Ostrin, do you use it? LISA OSTRIN: Yes, I do. HAMILTON: Ostrin says without a filtering app, cell phones and tablets expose people to a lot of blue light. OSTRIN: Especially as people are laying in bed and have their screens just a few inches from their face before bedtime. HAMILTON: And Ostrin says all that blue light prevents photoreceptor cells in the eye from triggering the releaseEncore: Blue Light And Sleephttp://tspr.org/post/encore-blue-light-and-sleep
113077 as http://tspr.orgSun, 03 Dec 2017 13:08:00 +0000Encore: Blue Light And SleepJon HamiltonIf you're losing sleep over the blue light coming from your phone, there's an app for that. In fact, there are now lots of apps that promise to improve sleep by filtering out the blue light produced by phones, tablets, computers and even televisions. But how well do these apps work? There haven't been any big studies to answer that question. So I phoned a couple of scientists who study the link between blue light exposure and sleep. My first call is to Lisa Ostrin , an assistant professor at the University of Houston College of Optometry. Ostrin owns an iPhone. And every iPhone comes with an app called Night Shift that lets you filter out blue light. So does Ostrin use Night Shift? "Yes I do," she tells me. Without a filtering app, cellphones and tablets expose users to an alarming amount of blue light, she says, "Especially as people are lying in bed and have their screens just a few inches from their face." And all that blue light prevents special photoreceptor cells in the eye fromApps Can Cut Blue Light From Devices, But Do They Help You Sleep?http://tspr.org/post/apps-can-cut-blue-light-devices-do-they-help-you-sleep
112758 as http://tspr.orgMon, 27 Nov 2017 10:08:00 +0000Apps Can Cut Blue Light From Devices, But Do They Help You Sleep?Jon HamiltonThe goal is simple: a drug that can relieve chronic pain without causing addiction. But achieving that goal has proved difficult, says Edward Bilsky , a pharmacologist who serves as the provost and chief academic officer at Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences in Yakima, Wash. "We know a lot more about pain and addiction than we used to," says Bilsky, "But it's been hard to get a practical drug." Bilsky is moderating a panel on pain, addiction and opioid abuse at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C., this week. Brain scientists have become increasingly interested in pain and addiction as opioid use has increased . About 2 million people in the U.S. now abuse opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But at least 25 million people suffer from chronic pain, according to an analysis by the National Institutes of Health. That means they have experienced daily pain for more than three months. The question is how to cut opioid abuseBrain Scientists Look Beyond Opioids To Conquer Painhttp://tspr.org/post/brain-scientists-look-beyond-opioids-conquer-pain
112151 as http://tspr.orgMon, 13 Nov 2017 10:02:00 +0000Brain Scientists Look Beyond Opioids To Conquer PainJon HamiltonCopyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: More than 30,000 brain scientists are in Washington, D.C., this week attending the Society for Neuroscience meeting. One of the hot topics this year is mental disorders such as depression and schizophrenia and autism. NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton has just come from the meeting to talk about some of what he's been seeing and hearing. Hi, John. Thanks for coming. JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Hi. MARTIN: So how does this work contribute to understanding mental disorders in people? HAMILTON: Twenty years ago, I'd say it didn't contribute much, but things are really changing. And I was really surprised. I was going through the abstracts to this year's meeting, and there were nearly a thousand papers that mentioned depression. There were 500 that mentioned schizophrenia or autism. And just this morning, there was this study on how - looking at the brain tissue of people with obsessive compulsive disorder and how it's different.In D.C., Brain Science Meets Behavioral Science To Shed Light On Mental Disordershttp://tspr.org/post/dc-brain-science-meets-behavioral-science-shed-light-mental-disorders
112144 as http://tspr.orgSun, 12 Nov 2017 22:52:00 +0000In D.C., Brain Science Meets Behavioral Science To Shed Light On Mental DisordersJon HamiltonWhen people don't get enough sleep, certain brain cells literally slow down. A study that recorded directly from neurons in the brains of 12 people found that sleep deprivation causes the bursts of electrical activity that brain cells use to communicate to become slower and weaker, a team reports online Monday in Nature Medicine. The finding could help explain why a lack of sleep impairs a range of mental functions, says Dr. Itzhak Fried , an author of the study and a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. "You can imagine driving a car and suddenly somebody jumps in front of the car at night," Fried says. "If you are sleep-deprived, your cells are going to react in a different way than in your normal state." The finding comes from an unusual study of patients being evaluated for surgery to correct severe epilepsy. As part of the evaluation, doctors place wires in the brain to find out where a patient's seizures are starting. That allows Fried and aSleepless Night Leaves Some Brain Cells As Sluggish As You Feelhttp://tspr.org/post/sleepless-night-leaves-some-brain-cells-sluggish-you-feel
111874 as http://tspr.orgMon, 06 Nov 2017 20:20:00 +0000Sleepless Night Leaves Some Brain Cells As Sluggish As You FeelJon HamiltonPeople who are thinking about killing themselves appear to have distinctive brain activity that can now be measured by a computer. In these people, words like "death" and "trouble" produce a distinctive "neural signature" not found in others, scientists report in the journal Nature Human Behaviour . More than 44,000 people commit suicide in the U.S. each year. "There really is a difference in the way [suicidal] people think about certain concepts," says Marcel Just , an author of the paper and the D.O. Hebb professor of cognitive neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University. That difference allowed a computer program to distinguish people who thought about suicide from people who did not, more than 90 percent of the time. It also allowed the computer program to distinguish people who had attempted suicide from people who had only thought about it. The results come from a study of just 34 young adults and will need to be replicated, says Barry Horwitz , chief of brain imaging and modelingBrain Patterns May Predict People At Risk Of Suicidehttp://tspr.org/post/brain-patterns-may-predict-people-risk-suicide
111555 as http://tspr.orgMon, 30 Oct 2017 23:27:00 +0000Brain Patterns May Predict People At Risk Of SuicideJon Hamiltonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZZPMcs482M When it comes to brain training, some workouts seem to work better than others. A comparison of the two most common training methods scientists use to improve memory and attention found that one was twice as effective as the other. The more effective method also changed brain activity in a part of the brain involved in high-level thinking. But neither method made anyone smarter, says Kara Blacker, the study's lead author and a researcher at The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine in Bethesda, Md. "Our hypothesis was that training might improve fluid intelligence or IQ," Blacker says. "But that's not what we found." Blacker did the memory research when she was part of a team at Johns Hopkins University and the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. The results were reported in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement. The team compared two approaches to improving working memory, which acts as a kind of mentalIn Memory Training Smackdown, One Method Dominateshttp://tspr.org/post/memory-training-smackdown-one-method-dominates
111184 as http://tspr.orgMon, 23 Oct 2017 14:37:00 +0000In Memory Training Smackdown, One Method DominatesJon HamiltonBrain imaging studies have a diversity problem. That's what researchers concluded after they re-analyzed data from a large study that used MRI to measure brain development in children from 3 to 18. Like most brain imaging studies of children, this one included a disproportionate number of kids who have highly educated parents with relatively high household incomes, the team reported Thursday in the journal Nature Communications . For example, parents of study participants were three times more likely than typical U.S. parents to hold an advanced degree. And participants' family incomes were much more likely to exceed $100,000 a year. So the researchers decided to see whether the results would be different if the sample represented the U.S. population, says Kaja LeWinn , an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. "We were able to weight that data so it looked more like the U.S." in terms of race, income, education and other variables, sheStudies Skewed By Focus On Well-Off, Educated Brains http://tspr.org/post/studies-skewed-focus-well-educated-brains
110902 as http://tspr.orgMon, 16 Oct 2017 17:56:00 +0000Studies Skewed By Focus On Well-Off, Educated Brains Jon HamiltonFresh evidence that the body's immune system interacts directly with the brain could lead to a new understanding of diseases from multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer's. A study of human and monkey brains found lymphatic vessels — a key part of the body's immune system — in a membrane that surrounds the brain and nervous system, a team reported Tuesday in the online journal eLife. Lymphatic vessels are a part of the lymphatic system, which extends throughout the body much like our network of veins and arteries. Instead of carrying blood, though, these vessels carry a clear fluid called lymph, which contains both immune cells and waste products. The new finding bolsters recent evidence in rodents that the brain interacts with the body's lymphatic system to help fend off diseases and remove waste. Until a few years ago, scientists believed that the brain's immune and waste removal systems operated independently. The discovery of lymphatic vessels near the surface of the brain could lead to aBrain's Link To Immune System Might Help Explain Alzheimer'shttp://tspr.org/post/brains-link-immune-system-might-help-explain-alzheimers
110347 as http://tspr.orgTue, 03 Oct 2017 21:00:00 +0000Brain's Link To Immune System Might Help Explain Alzheimer'sJon HamiltonCopyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: A degenerative brain disease called CTE keeps showing up in football players who have died. Just yesterday scientists revealed that Aaron Hernandez, who once played for the New England Patriots, had a severe form of the disease. Hernandez was found guilty of murder in 2015 and committed suicide in prison in April of this year. NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton is with us now to talk about the case. Hey, Jon. JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Hey. MCEVERS: So Aaron Hernandez was only 27 when he died. And he stopped playing football when he was 23, yet he was found to have severe CTE. Is that unusual? HAMILTON: It is in the sense that most cases of CTE have been found in older, retired players. But that may be actually a little misleading because you can only diagnose this problem in someone who has died, and people don't usually die in their 20s. Also, there have, you know, really been other young players with CTE. Some people mightScans Show Former NFL Player Aaron Hernandez Had A Severe Case Of CTEhttp://tspr.org/post/scans-show-former-nfl-player-aaron-hernandez-had-severe-case-cte
109885 as http://tspr.orgFri, 22 Sep 2017 21:23:00 +0000Scans Show Former NFL Player Aaron Hernandez Had A Severe Case Of CTEJon HamiltonAnother hurricane, another health care horror story. At least that's how it looked when eight patients died at a nursing home in Hollywood, Florida. The facility lost its air conditioning several days after Hurricane Irma struck. That event conjured memories of the scores of elderly who died in Louisiana hospitals and nursing homes following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But it would be misleading to attribute the Florida deaths primarily to Irma. And it would be a mistake to assume that most other health care facilities in southern Florida were unprepared for a hurricane. Here's what I saw as a reporter who covered the Florida nursing home deaths, but also visited Miami-area hospitals, clinics, shelters for people with medical problems, and even the area's largest dialysis center. First, the nursing home, called the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills. Yes, it experienced a partial loss of power after Irma. But the real problem appeared to be that the staff didn't act quickly enoughWhen Irma Arrived, Most Florida Health Care Facilities Were Readyhttp://tspr.org/post/when-irma-arrived-most-florida-health-care-facilities-were-ready
109717 as http://tspr.orgTue, 19 Sep 2017 09:13:00 +0000When Irma Arrived, Most Florida Health Care Facilities Were Ready